Mysterious Night-Shining Clouds Getting Brighter
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| After the sun sets on a summer evening and the sky fades to black, you may be lucky enough to see thin, wavy clouds illuminating the night, such as these seen over Billund, Denmark, on July 15, 2010. Jan Erik Paulsen/ NASA Earth Observatory. |
Clouds bright enough to see at night are not as hard to find as they once were.
These so-called night-shining clouds are still rare — rare enough that Matthew DeLand, who has been studying them for 11 years, has seen them only once. But his odds are increasing. [Related: In Images: Reading the Clouds.]
These mysterious clouds form between 50 and 53 miles (80 and 85 kilometers) up in the atmosphere, altitudes so high that they reflect light long after the sun has dropped below the horizon.
DeLand, an atmospheric scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has found that night-shining clouds — technically known as polar mesospheric or noctilucent clouds — are forming more frequently and becoming brighter. He has been observing the clouds in data from instruments that have been flown on satellites since 1978.
For reasons not fully understood, the clouds’ Read more…
Eruption Of Colima Volcano
A light colored plume, probably the result of rockfall on the dome, extends to the east (right) of the summit. The summit crater is the remnant of an explosive eruption in 1913 which knocked 100 meters (300 feet) off the top of the mountain. For a larger version of this image please go here. by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 28, 2011
Colima Volcano, Mexico’s most active, has been erupting since 1998. The eruption began with several months of earthquakes beneath the volcano, followed by explosions and rockfalls at the summit lava dome as it began to grow.
Dome growth was accompanied months later by a series of lava flows which cascaded down the southwestern flank of the mountain, stretching up to 3,100 meters (10,000 feet) from the summit.
Since then dome growth has continued, with a few periods of actively flowing lava. As of March 2010, the dome was growing about 2,000 cubic meters (70,000) cubic feet a day, leading to frequent small rockfalls and occasional ash plumes. In January 2011, local newspapers reported “dust plumes” rising over Colima, likely pulverized lava stirred up by landslides at the summit dome. Read more…
Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA
Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.
In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.
The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.
Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.
“We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration,” the letter said. “Google is most consumers’ gateway to the Internet. Nonetheless, it should not get special treatment and access because of a special relationship with the administration.” Read more…
How Egypt shut down the internet
Virtually all internet access in Egypt is cut off today as the government battles to contain the street protests that threaten to topple President Hosni Mubarak.
Organisations that track global internet access detected a collapse in traffic in to and out of Egypt at around 10.30GMT on Thursday night.
The shut down involved the withdrawal of more than 3,500 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes by Egyptian ISPs, according to Renesys, a networking firm. Only one ISP out of 10, Noor Data Networks, appeared largely unaffected. It connects to the outside world via an undersea cable operated by Telecom Italia.
According to BGPMon, another networking firm, 88 per cent of Egyptian internet access was successfully shut down, however.
Renesys speculated that the apparent anomaly of Noor Data Networks may be a result of the fact it provides services to the Egyptian stock exchange. Read more…
Your cellphone is spying on you…even when its off
Egypt shuts off Internet, cellphones as country braces for ‘Angry Friday’ protests
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 28, 2011; 4:59 AM
CAIRO – The streets of Egypt were tense Friday morning as the country braced for major protests, with the government preemptively disrupting communications networks and vowing to crack down on demonstrators.
Police in full riot gear lined major public squares and other critical intersections in this teeming capital city. Overnight, security services raided the homes of opposition leaders — including those of the Muslim Brotherhood — and arrested dozens. Meanwhile, Internet connections and mobile phone networks were down in Cairo and in other major cities.
Protest organizers have called for Egyptians to demonstrate against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak following noontime prayers on Friday, in defiance of a government ban.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, which has largely been absent from the protests that have roiled the nation this week, has said it will fully participate in Friday’s demonstrations, potentially drawing many more people to the streets. Read more…
U.S., Japan told time running out to deal with debt
IMF warns Japan and United States on need to tackle debt
* Politics make reining in U.S., Japan deficits difficult
* S&P downgrades Japan, sees no strategy to handle debt
* Bond markets calm on Friday, Japan vows fiscal discipline (Adds bullet points)
By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Lesley Wroughton
TOKYO/WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Japan and the United States faced new pressure to confront their swollen budget deficits as the IMF and rating agencies demanded more evidence they can bring their public debts under control.
The International Monetary Fund said the G7’s two biggest economies needed to spell out credible deficit-cutting plans before the markets lose patience and dump their bonds.
On Friday, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan vowed to push ahead with tax reforms aimed at curbing the country’s debt, but an uncooperative opposition and divisions within his own party on policy make the chances of success slim.
“The important thing is to maintain fiscal discipline and ensure market confidence in Japan’s public finances,” Kan, who took over in June as Japan’s fifth premier since 2006, told parliament’s upper house.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut Japan’s long-term debt rating on Thursday for the first time since 2002, and hours later Moody’s Investors Service warned the risk of the United States losing its top AAA rating, although small, was rising. Read more…
No baby oysters being found in Louisiana’s most productive areas
Oyster fishermen worried about problem area along the coast
NEW ORLEANS — In the waters stretching from the MR-GO, down to the mouth of the Mississippi River, oysters are having a tough time, and a mystery is unfolding in one of the state’s most productive areas for oysters.
“It’s not a good sign,” said John Tesvich, chairman of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force.
The sign is a lack of oyster spat, in what is known as coastal zone number two. Scientists are baffled, and they said so at a meeting on Tuesday of the Oyster Task Force.
“That’s really alarming, when we see large areas, some of the areas that are the heart of the predominant oyster seed ground, we’re not seeing the young spat this year,” Tesvich said. Read more…
“Atlantis Anomaly” Causes Shutdown Of US Army Weapons Base
A Russian Space Forces (VKS) report circulating in the Kremlin today says that one of their Kosmos-2469 satellites currently in orbit over North America has detected a gamma ray burst of “unprecedented proportions” emanating from the United States Army’s main weapons base Dugway Proving Ground located in their State of Utah.
According to this report, since the formation of what is described as a “magnetic vortex” began appearing in the Gulf of Aden (see our December 1, 2010 report Mysterious ‘Vortex’ Warned Is Creating Global Weather Catastrophe) a growing number of gamma ray bursts emanating from beneath our Earth and its seas, and directed towards the Sirius star system [Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky], have been detected and have given rise to the belief of many Russian scientists that they belong to an ancient “early warning system” of some type.
One of the largest of these gamma ray bursts was detected coming from the seas off the Florida coast in an area long believed to have once been a part of the Lost Continent of Atlantis described by the classical Greek philosopher and mathematician Plato (428-347BC) as being a naval power lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. Read more…
The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.
by narmer
The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production.
The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.
Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World.
The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already signalled it plans to allow commercial cultivation.
The rice’s producers, California-based Ventria Bioscience, have been given preliminary approval to grow it on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yogurt and muesli bars.
The news provoked horror among GM critics and consumer groups on both sides of the Atlantic.
GeneWatch UK, which monitors new GM foods, described it as “very disturbing”. Researcher Becky Price warned: “There are huge, huge health risks and people should rightly be concerned about this.”
Friends of the Earth campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: “Using food crops and fields as glorified drug factories is a very worrying development.
“If these pharmaceutical crops end up on consumers’ plates Read more…
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